(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: We Are Not Free to Go On As If Nothing Happened Yesterday [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Chloris Creator', 'Thom Hartmann'] Date: 2026-08-24 “August is nearly over – the month of apples and falling stars …” – Victor Nekrasov, Soviet writer and journalist, born in Ukraine “…We do not live in a post-racial America…I’m always an optimist, but I’m also a realist. It’s going to change by people talking about it, by art, by keeping it in front of our faces. You can talk about tough things without indicting, without pointing your finger and jumping up on the table and making people feel terrible about who they are. That’s the humanity part. I want to have that conversation with people.” Nikki Finney, answering a question about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision invalidating part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “Before a nation can be rebuilt, the citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place; how its institutions were undermined, how the language was twisted, how its people were manipulated.” – Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism _______________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, with daily posts from a MOTley crew of hosts who choose their own topics from a wide-open range: often music or poetry, sometimes history — anything and everything from Apples to Zoology! We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in our open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Meanwhile, grab your cuppa, and join in! ☕________________________ 13 poets born in August, a time when even words are muted by the fevered sun – but these heat-born poets steal thunder from the heavens, and hear the silences of the dead. __________________ August 23 __________________ 1908 – Musa McKim born in Oil City, Pennsylvania; American painter and poet who spent much of her youth in Panama because her father was a civil servant in the Canal Zone. During the Great Depression, she worked for the Treasury Section of Fine Arts painting murals in public buildings. In 1930, she met painter Philip Guston (originally Goldstein) when they were students at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and they married in 1937 after moving to New York. They worked together on a mural for a U.S. Forest Service building and on panels placed on U.S. Maritime Commission cargo ships. In 1940, they moved to Woodstock, New York, but spent time going back and forth to New York, then lived for a time in Rome. After Philip died in 1980, she returned to Woodstock, and began writing poetry. She died of heart failure at age 83 in 1992. Alone With the Moon by Musa McKim What about the small game and the dew falling? The dry leaves of autumn magnify the hop of the lightest bird. Why don’t you lie down to pass the time? Why not sleep – and never meet? Let the witnesses be distant mountains. Should I get back to the city? To be with the guilty? Or stay with the tree unconscious of me? “Alone With the Moon” from Alone With the Moon: Selected Writings of Musa McKim, published posthumously, © 1994 by her daughter Musa Mayer – The Figures Press __________________ 1923 – Nazik Al-Malaika born in Baghdad, Iraq, to a feminist poet mother and academic father; one of the most influential women poets in Iraq. She wrote her first poem at age 10. Al-Malaika graduated from the College of Arts in Baghdad in 1944, and later earned a master’s degree in comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was the first Arabic poet to use free verse, in her ground-breaking second book of poetry, Sparks and Ashes. Al-Malaika left Iraq in 1970 with her husband Abdel Hadi Mahbooba and their family, following the rise of the Baath Party to power. She died in Cairo, Egypt, in 2007 at the age of 83. Her other books of poetry include: And the sea changes its color; Bottom of the Wave; The Night’s Lover; and Revolt Against the Sun, which was edited and published posthumously. The Night Asks Who I Am by Nazik Al-Malaika The night asks who I am I am its deep black anxious secret I am its rebellious silence I masked my being with stillness And wrapped my heart with doubts And I remained pondering here Contemplating, as the centuries ask me Who am I? And the wind asks who I am I am its confused soul; time has denied me I am like it, in no place We keep walking with no end We keep passing with no stay So when we reach the bend We think it the end of misery But, then space! And time ask who I am I am like it, a tyrant, folding the ages And I return to grant it resurrection I create the bygone past From the temptation of a pleasant hope And bury it again, I do To pave myself a new yesterday Whose tomorrow is but ice And the self asks who I am I am like it, perplexed, staring into the darkness Nothing grants me peace! I keep questioning, while the answer Remains hidden by mirage And I keep thinking it is near But when I reach towards it It melts And fades And vanishes “The Night Asks Who I Am” © by Nazik Al-Malaika – this uncredited translation appeared at the online site Scattered Scholar on January 22, 2025 __________________ 1974 – Michelle McGrane born in Mutare, then Rhodesia now Zimbabwe, lived in Malawi from age one to age 14, when her family moved to South Africa; her published poetry collections are Fireflies & Blazing Stars; Hybrid; and The Suitable Girl. She has been a mentor in the Agenda Feminist Media Project Creative Writing Programme. In 2004, she participated in the Centre for the Book’s Turning the Page Festival in Cape Town. A Girl Like That by Michelle McGrane Corrective rape is a hate crime in which a person is raped because of their perceived sexual or gender orientation. – EE Bartle, ‘Lesbians And Hate Crimes’, Journal of Poverty, 2000 The newspaper report said the young woman was repeatedly raped, kicked, beaten within an inch of her life, while her mama cried behind the door. Two manly relatives decided to straighten her out once and for all, give her strong medicine down on her knees, the cheeky cunt had it coming. A girl like that, what did she expect? Shameful lesbian bitch brought dishonour to the family name, refused to come round to their way of thinking. “A Girl Like That” © 2012 by Michelle McGrane –from the anthology Binders Full of Women, edited by Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe __________________ August 24 __________________ 1591 – Robert Herrick baptized on this date, born in Cheapside, London, England; English lyric poet and Anglican cleric known for his poetry collection, Hesperides, which includes “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” with the opening line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” He was dismissed as a minor poet, until 20th century scholars began to reevaluate his work. His father, a goldsmith, died when Herrick was an infant. He was apprenticed at 16 to his uncle, also a goldsmith, but left at age 22, and went to Saint John’s College, Cambridge. Limited means forced his transfer to the less expensive Trinity Hall. He took holy orders in 1623, but little else is known about his life from 1617 until 1629, when he was appointed as vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire. A Royalist during the English Civil War, he was expelled from his parish in 1647 for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant. During his exile, he lived in London on the charity of his friends and family until the monarchy was restored. Herrick returned to his Parrish in 1662, where he died at age 83 in 1674. Upon Parson Beanes by Robert Herrick Old Parson Beanes hunts six days of the week, And on the seventh, he has his notes to seek. Six days he hollows so much breath away That on the seventh he can not preach or pray. __________________ 1898 – Malcolm Cowley born in Belsano, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Pittsburgh; American novelist, poet, historian, and critic; an ex-pat American who lived in Paris in the 1920s, which he wrote about in his memoir Exile’s Return (1934). In 1929, his first book of poetry Blue Juniata was published, and he became an associate editor of the left-leaning New Republic. He was involved in leftist politics in the 1920s and 30s. In 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Cowley’s friend Archibald MacLeish as head of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures, MacLeish recruited Cowley as an analyst, but Cowley soon ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee. MacLeish was pressured by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to dismiss Cowley. In January 1942, MacLeish sent his reply that the FBI needed a course of instruction in history. “Don’t you think it would be a good thing if all investigators could be made to understand that Liberalism is not only not a crime but actually the attitude of the President of the United States and the greater part of his Administration?” he wrote. Cowley resigned two months later. In 1944, Cowley began a new career as a literary advisor, editor, and talent scout at Viking Press. He worked on the Portable Library series, an anthology of paperback reprints that could be mass-produced cheaply and marketed to military personnel. His first project was The Portable Hemingway, which sold so well, he followed it with The Portable Faulkner, which rescued Faulkner from falling into literary obscurity. He pushed for publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, edited an anthology of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, and oversaw a reissue of Tender Is the Night. His memoir, The View From 80, was published in 1980. He died at age 90 in 1989. Prophetic by Malcolm Cowley With blocks of asphalt where the streets ran once, And granite and brick spilling in heaps across them, With girders bridging the rain-washed ravines, it would be More pains than the worth of it to make ten level farms out of Manhattan Island. But in the old graveyards, And under the site of stables and slaughter-houses, What excellent gardens! “Prophetic” appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 1923 issue __________________ August 25 __________________ 1836 – Bret Harte born as Francis Brett Hart in Albany NY; American short story writer and poet, best known for his stories about the California Gold Rush. He also wrote plays, editorials, book reviews, and parodies of famous novels. His formal schooling ended when he was 13, and at age 17, he went to California, where he worked as a miner, teacher, messenger for the Well Fargo & Co. Express, a printer’s devil (apprentice), journalist, and even secretary of the San Francisco Mint. By 1860, he was the editor of the San Francisco newspaper The Gold Era. Harte’s first short story to be published appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in October 1863. He became editor of The Overland Monthly, a new literary magazine, where his story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” first appeared. It made him famous, but over time his popularity waned, and he started a new career in 1878 as U.S. Consul in Krefeld, Germany. He spent the rest of his life in Europe serving as a consul, but he never stopped writing. Eventually he was sent to London, were he died of throat cancer at age 65 in May 1902. The Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte were published posthumously in 1912. Coyote by Bret Harte Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew, Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through; Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay, He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall, Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall, Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray. Here, Carlo, old fellow,— he‘s one of your kind,— Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind. What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray Well, take what you will—though it be on the sly, Marauding or begging,— I shall not ask why, But will call it a dole, just to help on his way A four-footed friar in orders of gray! “Coyote” from Stories and Poems, by Bret Harte – originally published in 1915 __________________ 1910 – Dorothea Tanning born in Galesburg, Illinois; American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. She moved to Chicago in 1930 to work as a commercial artist, and there she first encountered Surrealism at Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art. Her work for Macy’s department store so impressed their art director that he introduced her to gallery owner Julien Levy, who mounted solo exhibitions of her work in 1944 and 1948. Levy introduced her to other painters allied with his New York gallery, including Max Ernst, who left his wife, Peggy Guggenheim, for Tanning. They were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, and remained married for 34 years, living for many years in France, where she remained after his death in 1976. Her return to New York in the 1980s precipitated a shift in focus to her writing, which had been a secondary pursuit for most of her life. She wrote two memoirs, a novel, and four books of poetry before her death at age 101 in January 2012. Woman Waving to Trees by Dorothea Tanning Not that anyone would notice it at first. I have taken to marveling at the trees in our park. One thing I can tell you: they are beautiful and they know it. They are also tired, hundreds of years stuck in one spot— beautiful paralytics. When I am under them, they feel my gaze, watch me wave my foolish hand, and envy the joy of being a moving target. Loungers on the benches begin to notice. One to another, “Well, you see all kinds…” Most of them sit looking down at nothing as if there was truly nothing else to look at until there is that woman waving up to the branching boughs of these old trees. Raise your heads, pals, look high, you may see more than you ever thought possible, up where something might be waving back, to tell her she has seen the marvelous. “Woman Waving to Trees” from Coming to That © 2011 by Dorothea Tanning – Graywolf Press __________________ 1962 – Taslima Nasrin born in Mymensingh, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); Bangladeshi author, poet and physician who was exiled in 1994. Her first writings were mainly poetry, often about female oppression and written in graphic language. In the early 1990s, she published three collections of essays and three novels. In 1993, her novel Lajja (Shame), about a Hindu family attacked by Muslims, radically changed her life. Muslims, outraged by her negative portrayal of Islamic philosophy, called for a ban of the novel, and she was threatened and physically attacked. The Council of Islamic Soldiers, a radical fundamentalist group, offered a bounty for her death. In 1994, she was misquoted in a newspaper interview, and was charged with “making inflammatory statements.” Thousands of demonstrators labeled her “an apostate” who vilified Islam. After two months in hiding, she escaped to Sweden, ceasing her medical practice to become a full-time writer, and activist for women’s rights and freedom of expression. When her Bangladeshi passport was revoked, she was granted citizenship by Sweden, and spent time in Western Europe and America. She has also lived at times in India, but her books continue to be feminist, frank about her sexuality, and critical of Islamic subjugation of women, so the protests, banning of her books, and fatwas calling for her death have continued. Though her outspoken comments have frequently caused criticism, she has also been honored with numerous awards; including a 1994 Human Rights Award from the French government, the 1994 Kurt Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, 1994 Feminist of the Year from the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the 2002 Freethought Heroine Award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. At The Back Of Progress by Taslima Nasrin The fellow who sits in the air-conditioned office is the one who in his youth raped a dozen or so young girls, and, at cocktail parties, is secretly stricken with lust, fastening his eyes on lovelies’ bellybuttons. In five-star hotels, he tries out his different sexual tastes with a variety of women, then returns home and beats his wife because of an over-ironed handkerchief or shirt collar. In his office Mr. Big puffs on a cigarette, shuffles through files, rings for his employee shouts, demands tea, drinks, and returns to writing people’s character references. His employee speaks in such a low voice that no one would ever suspect how, at home, he also raises his voice, is vile to his family but with his buddies on the porch or at a movie indulges in loud harangues on politics, art, literature, and how some female – his mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother – committed suicide. Bidding goodbye to his buddies, he returns home, beats his wife over a bar of soap or the baby’s pneumonia. Next day, at work, he pleasantly brings the tea, keeps the lighter in his pocket, receives a tip of a couple of taka, and tells no one that he divorced his first wife for her sterility, his second for giving birth to a daughter, his third for not bringing a sufficient dowry. Now, with wife number four, he again has someone: To beat over a green chili or a handful of rice. “At The Back Of Progress” from The Game in Reverse, © 1995 by Taslima Nasrin, English translation © 1995 by Carolyn Wright – George Braziller, publisher __________________ August 26 __________________ 1957 – Nikky Finney born in Conway, South Carolina, but grew up in Sumter SC; American poet and academic; her father was a lawyer, and her mother, a teacher. They were both active in the Civil Rights Movement, and Finney has long been an advocate for social justice and cultural preservation. She was the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky (1993-2013), and then held the Bennett Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Head Off & Split, and the 1999 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Her poetry collections include On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, Heartwood, The World is Round, and Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry. A New Day Dawns by Nikki Finney On the occasion of the Confederate flag falling in South Carolina, July 10, 2015 It is the pearl-blue peep of day. All night the palmetto sky Was seized with the aurora And alchemy of the remarkable. A blazing canopy of newly minted Light fluttered in while we slept. We are not free to go on as if Nothing happened yesterday. Not free to cheer as if all our Prayers have finally been answered Today. We are free only to search The yonder of each other’s faces, As we pass by, tip our hat, hold a Door ajar, asking silently, Who are we now? Blood spilled In battle is two-headed: horror & Sweet revelation. Let us put the Cannons of our eyes away forever. Our one and only Civil War is done. Let us tilt, rotate, strut on. If we, The living, do not give our future The same honor as the sacred dead, Of then and now — we lose everything. The gardenia air feels lighter on this New day, guided now by iridescent Fireflies, those atomlike creatures Of our hot summer nights, now begging Us to team up and search with them For that which brightens every Darkness. Soon, it will be just us Again, alone, beneath the swirling Indigo sky of South Carolina. Alone & Working on the answer to our great Day’s question: Who are we now? What new human cosmos can be made Of this tempest of tears, this upland Of inconsolable jubilation? In all our Lifetimes, finally, this towering Undulating moment is here. © 2015 by Nikki Finney __________________ August 27 __________________ 1953 – Gjertrud Schnackenberg born in Tacoma, Washington; American poet. She began writing poetry at Mount Holyoake College and won the school’s Glascock Prize in 1974 and 1975. After graduating, she was a Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. She has published six poetry collections, including The Throne of Labdacus; A Gilded Lapse of Time; Supernatural Love; and Heavenly Questions, which won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize. Kandinsky’s “Night” by Gjertrud Schnackenberg The blue half-moon overhead glides by like a skate While, as if underwater, a girl with the stare Of a sunken ship’s figurehead combs Her flowing green hair. Unmoving, a witch moves, a vacant rocking chair, Saying, Never mind, it’s too late. A little girl clutches the pretty one’s dress Her hair glows like a seashell, her face is a pearl, She can’t understand the low murmur she hears Nor the hypnotic swirl Of the changing seafloor where pink plumes unfurl Like reaching arms, like the eroding caress. That could swallow a ship, that prods the whale waking Stretched out on the beach; that so changes your face You’re aghast before the glass That quickens the pace Of the traveler’s nightmare of running in place: The fabled hag’s, Never mind. The unmaking. “Kandinsky’s “Night”” © 1974 by Gjertrud Schnackenberg appeared in the June 1974 issue of Poetry magazine __________________ August 28 _________________ 1952 – Rita Dove born in Akron, Ohio; American poet and essayist; winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Thomas and Beulah; U.S. Library of Congress Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, 1993-1995, the first African-American appointed after the title change from “Poetry Consultant” to “Poet Laureate” At age 40, she was the youngest poet to that date to be appointed Poet Laureate by the Librarian of Congress. Among her many accolades and awards, in 2021, she received the Gold Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Academy’s highest honor. Her poetry collections include The Yellow House on the Corner; Mother Love; On the Bus with Rosa Parks; American Smooth; and Playlist for the Apocalypse. Canary by Rita Dove for Michael S. Harper Billie Holiday’s burned voice has as many shadows as lights a mournful caldelabra against a sleek piano, the gardenia her signature under that ruined face. (Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass, magic spoon, magic needle. Take all day if you have to with your mirror and your bracelet of song.) Fact is,the invention of women under siege has been to sharpen love in the service of myth. If you can’t be free, be a mystery. “Canary” from Grace Notes, © 1989 by Rita Dove – W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. __________________ August 29 __________________ 1929 – Thom Gunn born in Gravesend, Kent UK ; English poet who lived most of his adult life in San Francisco, where he moved in the 1950s to live with his American partner Mike Kitay. They had met as students at Trinity College, Cambridge. Gunn taught writing at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. His poems are frequently explorations of drug ecstasy, homosexuality, and life in the ‘60s and ‘70s in San Francisco. Later Gunn wrote wrenching poems about the AIDS crisis. He died at age 74 in April 2004. His many poetry collections include: Fighting Terms; Touch; Moly; The Man With Night Sweats; and Old Stories. Apartment Cats by Thom Gunn The Girls wake, stretch, and pad up to the door. They rub my leg and purr; One sniffs around my shoe, Rich with an outside smell, The other rolls back on the floor – White bib exposed, and stomach of soft fur. Now, more awake, they re-enact Ben Hur Along the corridor, Wheel, gallop; as they do, Their noses twitching still, Their eyes get wild, their bodies tense, Their usual prudence seemingly withdraws. And then they wrestle; parry, lock of paws, Blind hug of close defense, Tail-thump, and smothered mew. If either, though, feels claws, She abruptly rises, knowing well How to stalk off in wise indifference. “Apartment Cats” © by Thom Gunn, appeared in The Great Cat: Poems About Cats – Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series, 2005 edition ________________ 📚☕ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/24/800088207/community/morning-open-thread-we-are-not-free-to-go-on-as-if-nothing-happened-yesterday/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/